A Sound Built From Displacement
UROK, also known as Urok Shirhan, works at the crossing point of performance, visual art, and critical theory — and her music carries that same layered depth. Of Iraqi background and based between the Netherlands and Athens, she holds an MA with Honours in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has spent years researching how sound and voice relate to power, belonging, and collective memory.
Much of that research grows out of her own family's history of displacement and political struggle. Rather than keeping that work confined to galleries and journals, UROK carries it onto the dance floor — where a genre-crossing DJ set becomes another way of asking the same questions about identity, migration, and community.
"Her DJ sets unfold a polyglot club sound, where Arab, Latinx, and Brazilian rhythms meet leftfield techno and deconstructed bass."
From Radio Alhara to the Istanbul Biennial
UROK's practice has always lived across mediums. In 2020 and 2021, she hosted Sound Without Image, a monthly live show on Radio Alhara, the community station broadcasting out of Bethlehem, Palestine, that became a lifeline for independent music during the pandemic. Her written work has appeared with Infrasonica, NORIENT, the Beirut Art Center's The Derivative, Sonic Continuum at Nottingham Contemporary, and PrintRoom in Rotterdam — alongside residencies and fellowships at London's Delfina Foundation and BAK in Utrecht.
On the club side, she's a resident DJ at 1982 Art Space & Bar in Athens, with regular sets at Latraac, BIOS, Ela Na Sou Po, Cantina Social, and Romantso — and she recently played the opening of the 18th Istanbul Biennial. Wherever she plays, the throughline is the same: rhythms that refuse a single origin, built for rooms where different diasporas can recognize themselves at once.
UROK × Habibi Shik Shok: Three Times Around
UROK has become one of the most consistent voices in the Habibi Shik Shok story. She played Heshk Beshk's Arabic Electro Night at Plex in November 2025, returned for the Bageion Hotel edition in March 2026, and closed out the lineup once more at Heshk Beshk VOL.3 in June 2026 — sharing the bill with Cairo's 3Phaz for a night built around Shaabi music, dance, and contemporary SWANA expression.
Each time, her sets have done the thing Habibi Shik Shok exists to make space for: taking a room full of different backgrounds and histories and finding the rhythm that belongs to all of them at once. For an Athens-based crowd shaped by its own layered diaspora, that's not a small thing — it's the whole point.
What's Next
Keep up with UROK's sets, writing, and upcoming shows through her work with 1982 Art Space & Bar and the broader Athens underground scene she's helped shape.
And if you caught her at any of the three Heshk Beshk nights — you already know why she keeps getting invited back.